Webmaster / Author required!

Those of you who regularly read the website will know what a splendid job Matt Best has done over this last year or so at keeping it up to date.  Most of you will also know that he is now at Exeter University and is no longer in a position to manage the club website (or carry out a number of the other roles he has done in recent years).  Thanks Matt, for several splendid jobs well done!

Unfortunately, we had NO takers for a number of roles at the club’s AGM and could really do with a few members stepping up to the plate.  Thanks to Ivor Salter for agreeing to take on the Treasurer’s role and to Tony Purser for taking on the club championship.  However, we need someone to pick up Webmaster, A Team captain and Secretary.  I am doing my best in each of these roles at the moment but I simply have too much on to do them all well.  I have already announced that I will definitely stop being Secretary from the next AGM and having given at least two years’ notice of this, I think that should be plenty of time for a replacement to be found.

I know there are always reasons not to do things – “I’m too busy,” “I’m no good at…”, “I’ve already served in the past,” and so on….Believe me, I’ve heard every excuse there is.

Well, all of those who have carried out these roles in the club’s recent history could quite legitimately have set out these reasons for NOT doing so.  But they didn’t.  Perhaps we could divide up some of the jobs differently, or maybe someone wouldn’t mind doing a job that’s already filled, to leave an incumbent available for a different role.  Whatever, your thoughts, please give some very serious thought about what you can do for your club and speak to me about it.

In the meantime, I will do what I can to put information on the website but I know there will be busy times at work, or with the wider Shropshire chess scene, which will prevent me doing so in as timely a fashion as I would like.  If people can email me (francis.best@gmx.com) with text, particularly match reports, or articles about interesting games they have played, including the moves, then it’s a straight forward matter for me to add them to the site.  Handwritten material, even if sent as an image file, is less useful because I then have to type it all in.  Similarly, scrappy scoresheets, which often don’t make sense when trying to enter into Chessbase or similar, are also hard work!  Decent quality pictures can also be added fairly easily to the site, so do email those to me as well.

The point about being the webmaster is that the technicalities of putting material on the website are not difficult; what takes the time is thinking up the words and typing them into the appropriate format, such as a word processor or email.

I don’t wish to cast a pall of gloom over things but it’s important that everyone realises the seriousness of the situation and doesn’t just think that it’s someone else’s problem.

I have been given some material, including some game scores and will aim to update the site with these shortly.

In the meantime, enjoy your chess and, good luck in the forthcoming season.

Francis Best, Secretary